Editions

C# has gradually been adding support for discards. This article explores how this evolution has led to some surprises.

The first in a series of posts talking about how and why we migrated an application from Azure Functions to Azure Container Apps

There are three lifetimes available with the Microsoft Dependency Injection container: transient, singleton, and scoped. In this post, we explain their different behaviours and the importance of being aware of the lifetimes of the dependencies in our applications.

Many data projects fail to deliver the impact they should for a simple reason – they focus on the data. This series of posts explains a different way of thinking that will set up your data & analytics projects for success. Using an iterative, action-oriented, insight discovery process, it demonstrates tools and techniques that will help you to identify, define and prioritize requirements in your own projects so that they deliver maximum value. It also explores the synergy with modern cloud analytics platforms like Azure Synapse, explaining how the process and the architecture actively support each other for fast, impactful delivery.

In this post we will talk through how to expand on a data team's creative skillset, without access to specialist photo editing software such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

I recently passed the PL-300 - Power BI Data Analyst exam. Here are some tips to prepare for it that I found useful!

The stack and heap are central components of memory management in C# programs. This post aims to introduce the topic, with a number of worked examples.

Jessica joined endjin as part of the Software Engineering Apprenticeship 2021 cohort. In this post, Jessica reflects on her first 6 months.

Liam joined endjin as part of the Software Engineering Apprenticeship 2021 cohort. In this post he reflects on his first six months and looks to the future.

If you're interested in the Distributed Application Runtime (Dapr) and how it can simplify migrating existing workloads to use cloud platform services, then this series might be for you. In this post, we continue modifying the excellent Dapr Traffic Control sample application by swapping the MQTT-based messaging with Azure Storage Queues. We will also look at how you can use the Dapr programming model as an alternative to cloud-provider SDKs.

We're constantly using computer networks and the internet, especially as developers. The Web is the most important application on the Internet; this is the second of two posts aiming to explain the basics of the Web.

If you're interested in the Distributed Application Runtime (Dapr) and how it can simplify migrating existing workloads to use cloud platform services, then this series might be for you. In this post, we continue modifying the excellent Dapr Traffic Control sample application by adding Azure Key Vault integration for its secrets management.

Many data projects fail to deliver the impact they should for a simple reason – they focus on the data. This series of posts explains a different way of thinking that will set up your data & analytics projects for success. Using an iterative, action-oriented, insight discovery process, it demonstrates tools and techniques that will help you to identify, define and prioritize requirements in your own projects so that they deliver maximum value. It also explores the synergy with modern cloud analytics platforms like Azure Synapse, explaining how the process and the architecture actively support each other for fast, impactful delivery.

Many data projects fail to deliver the impact they should for a simple reason – they focus on the data. This series of posts explains a different way of thinking that will set up your data & analytics projects for success. Using an iterative, action-oriented, insight discovery process, it demonstrates tools and techniques that will help you to identify, define and prioritize requirements in your own projects so that they deliver maximum value. It also explores the synergy with modern cloud analytics platforms like Azure Synapse, explaining how the process and the architecture actively support each other for fast, impactful delivery.

Many data projects fail to deliver the impact they should for a simple reason – they focus on the data. This series of posts explains a different way of thinking that will set up your data & analytics projects for success. Using an iterative, action-oriented, insight discovery process, it demonstrates tools and techniques that will help you to identify, define and prioritize requirements in your own projects so that they deliver maximum value. It also explores the synergy with modern cloud analytics platforms like Azure Synapse, explaining how the process and the architecture actively support each other for fast, impactful delivery.

The "Shared Metadata Model" is a powerful feature within Synapse Analytics that synchronizes Spark database objects with SQL Serverless. This article describes how to give non-admin users access to these synchronized objects in a least-privileged manner.

A lesser known feature of Azure Synapse is the "Shared Metadata Model". Synapse has the capability to automatically synchronize tables created via Synapse Spark with objects you can query via the usual SQL Serverless endpoint, without any additional configuration. This article brings attention to this capability, highlighting the benefits and tradeoffs vs rolling your own SQL Serverless VIEWs.

SQL Serverless in Azure Synapse provides a structured way to query your data on-demand directly from your data lake. This consumption-based, flexible approach to data warehousing provides a compelling alternative to the traditional star-schema or RDBMS, but comes with it's own set of new challenges. This post explores some of the considerations around managing schemas in a serverless world, including an approach for ensuring that your data and schema remain in sync.

Serverless data architectures enable leaner data insights and operations. How do you reap the rewards while avoiding the potential pitfalls?

There is a new service in town that promises to transform the way you query the contents of your data lake. Azure Synapse Analytics comes with a new offering called SQL Serverless allowing you to query your data on-demand with no need for pre-provisioned resources.When we heard about the new service we were keen to get involved, so for the last 10 months we've been working with the SQL Serverless product group to provide feedback on the service and to help ensure it meets our customers needs. During this time we've put it through it's paces by implementing a range of real-world use cases. We were particularly interested to see how it stacked up as a replacement for Data Lake Analytics, where to date there has been no clear and easy migration path.

Have you or are you about to invest in Azure Databricks? If so, the new Spark offering in Azure Synapse Analytics is likely to have grabbed your attention and rightly so. Why is Microsoft putting yet another Spark offering on the table and what does it mean for you?

Many data projects fail to deliver the impact they should for a simple reason – they focus on the data. This series of posts explains a different way of thinking that will set up your data & analytics projects for success. Using an iterative, action-oriented, insight discovery process, it demonstrates tools and techniques that will help you to identify, define and prioritize requirements in your own projects so that they deliver maximum value. It also explores the synergy with modern cloud analytics platforms like Azure Synapse, explaining how the process and the architecture actively support each other for fast, impactful delivery.

Many data projects fail to deliver the impact they should for a simple reason – they focus on the data. This series of posts explains a different way of thinking that will set up your data & analytics projects for success. Using an iterative, action-oriented, insight discovery process, it demonstrates tools and techniques that will help you to identify, define and prioritize requirements in your own projects so that they deliver maximum value. It also explores the synergy with modern cloud analytics platforms like Azure Synapse, explaining how the process and the architecture actively support each other for fast, impactful delivery.

Many data projects fail to deliver the impact they should for a simple reason – they focus on the data. This series of posts explains a different way of thinking that will set up your data & analytics projects for success. Using an iterative, action-oriented, insight discovery process, it demonstrates tools and techniques that will help you to identify, define and prioritize requirements in your own projects so that they deliver maximum value. It also explores the synergy with modern cloud analytics platforms like Azure Synapse, explaining how the process and the architecture actively support each other for fast, impactful delivery.

Jessica joined endjin as part of the Software Engineering Apprenticeship 2021 cohort. In this post, Jessica reflects on her first 6 months.

Liam joined endjin as part of the Software Engineering Apprenticeship 2021 cohort. In this post he reflects on his first six months and looks to the future.

Eli joined endjin as part of the Software Engineering Apprenticeship 2021 cohort. In this post she reflects on her first six months.

Have the recent changes to Azure CLI on Windows broken your dev inner loop when working with containerised applications that need access to Azure resources? If so, this post provides a workaround that will unblock you without having to be stuck on an old version of the Azure CLI.

Containers and Docker offer a different approach to development and deployment of applications. This post provides an introduction to containerisation and Docker, and provides examples of creating containerised applications with Docker.

Bicep provides a significant improvement in tooling for organisations seeking to deploy infrastructure as code on Microsoft Azure.

Have the recent changes to Azure CLI on Windows broken your dev inner loop when working with containerised applications that need access to Azure resources? If so, this post provides a workaround that will unblock you without having to be stuck on an old version of the Azure CLI.

In this blog we demonstrate how the Gherkin specification can be adapted to enable BDD to be applied to data engineering use cases.

We often come across spreadsheets and CSV files that contain features which are a list of tags or categories. This blog article walks through a simple way of extracting insights from this data using a combination of Pandas for data wrangling and Power BI for analytics and visualisation.

Monetizing your APIs is a complex challenge; creating your business, revenue, & pricing model, then translating into a technical implementation requires significant investment. Working with the Azure API Management team we provide guidance, videos and code to help accelerate your journey.

Some of my thoughts inspired whilst helping out on the farm over the weekend. What is the future of work given the increasing presence of machines in our day to day lives? In which situations can AI deliver greatest value? How can we ease the stress of digital transformation on people who are impacted by it?

Serverless data architectures enable leaner data insights and operations. How do you reap the rewards while avoiding the potential pitfalls?

Some of my thoughts inspired whilst helping out on the farm over the weekend. What is the future of work given the increasing presence of machines in our day to day lives? In which situations can AI deliver greatest value? How can we ease the stress of digital transformation on people who are impacted by it?

Wishing Azure Synapse Analytics had support for SQL notebooks? Fear not, it's easy to take advantage rich interactive notebooks for SQL Pools and SQL on Demand.

Tracking down unexpected allocations in a high-performance .NET parsing library.

This is a summary of the sessions I attended at SQLbits 2022 in London, which is Europe's largest expert led data conference.

Some of my thoughts inspired whilst helping out on the farm over the weekend. What is the future of work given the increasing presence of machines in our day to day lives? In which situations can AI deliver greatest value? How can we ease the stress of digital transformation on people who are impacted by it?

Summary of key themes from the Doing Data Together conference hosted virtually by The Scotsman newspaper and Edinburgh University in November 2020. The conference agenda was pivoted to focus on the use of data to help tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. It provided a fascinating insight into the lessons learned.

Get started with Mattermost on Azure using the Mattermost on AKS quickstart from the Azure CNAB Quickstart Library.

Many API frameworks implement an async HTTP API pattern to address the problem of coordinating the state of long-running operations with external clients. This post looks at how we can use Axios interceptors to simplify and centralise the UI logic required to work with this API pattern.

Tracking down unexpected allocations in a high-performance .NET parsing library.

In this post we will talk through how to expand on a data team's creative skillset, without access to specialist photo editing software such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

I recently passed the PL-300 - Power BI Data Analyst exam. Here are some tips to prepare for it that I found useful!

Performance tuning is an important aspect of Power BI report development. This blog post highlights useful analyzer tools you can utilise to optimise the performance of your Power BI reports.

Bicep provides a significant improvement in tooling for organisations seeking to deploy infrastructure as code on Microsoft Azure.

Data Engineers/Developers want to get access to Azure Synapse Analytics as quickly as possible to start designing and creating their data solutions. Being denied access to Synapse Studio can be frustrating and slows matters down. This article will address the "You need permission to access workspace..." error, discuss what causes it, and describe how to fix it.

Azure Synapse Analytics developers need to be assigned a role within Synapse Studio in order to access the GUI. The Azure CLI provides one way of programmatically achieving this, which can be done by any Owner or Contributor of the Azure Synapse Analytics resource.

Monetizing your APIs is a complex challenge; creating your business, revenue, & pricing model, then translating into a technical implementation requires significant investment. Working with the Azure API Management team we provide guidance, videos and code to help accelerate your journey.

Microsoft recently shot a video interviewing endjin co-founder, Howard van Rooijen, and Director of Engineering, James Broome, about how Microsoft has helped endjin grow over the past decade. This posts the top 10 ways in which Microsoft helped - from providing access to valuable software and services, to opening up sales channels, to helping to navigate the minefield of UK Financial Services regulations around cloud adoption.

In this post we discuss the characteristics of a great FinTech startup, and the importance of the API Economy to innovation in Financial Services.

We describe how to create a high level view of your digital assets, where everything is measured equally and actionable insights can be generated that allow you to optimise your budget and build a roadmap focused on business value.

This is a summary of the sessions I attended at SQLbits 2022 in London, which is Europe's largest expert led data conference.

Spending more time planning then doing? Struggling to get stakeholders engaged in making tough decisions about prioritisation? This simple, light touch approach to visual prioritisation could help.

In this post we will talk through how to expand on a data team's creative skillset, without access to specialist photo editing software such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

Field Parameters allow users to dynamically change the measure being analysed within a report. This blog post will explore how to use the new Field Parameters feature to dynamically switch between measures in a visua.

In this post we will talk through a step-by-step guide for how to design and build custom buttons in Power BI. We'll start with the basic foundations of shape and form, to applying icons, states, and actions with the view to extending your brand collateral across your report design and UI.

In this post we will talk through how to expand on a data team's creative skillset, without access to specialist photo editing software such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

Field Parameters allow users to dynamically change the measure being analysed within a report. This blog post will explore how to use the new Field Parameters feature to dynamically switch between measures in a visua.

In this post we will talk through a step-by-step guide for how to design and build custom buttons in Power BI. We'll start with the basic foundations of shape and form, to applying icons, states, and actions with the view to extending your brand collateral across your report design and UI.